Ed Burns, Wade Boggs And A Fishing Tournament In New York City

Staten Island-born Captain Frank Crescitelli, master of the New York City Harbor light tackle and flyfishing scene, simultaneously plays the role of Savior and Apostle Paul to his home waters. He is the head of the Fishermen’s Conservation Organization, a group set on protecting the city's striped bass. He is also the world’s leading promoter of the urban fishery that, implausibly, is one of the best in the nation, city or otherwise.

It’s also one of the wackiest.

On Friday, Captain Frank was in his element, at the helm of his baby, the Manhattan Cup, New York City’s largest and loudest fishing tournament, now in its 14th year. The tournament--which gathers together Wall Street tycoons, fish bums and some who could be categorized as both--raises money for the Friends of The Wounded Warrior Project, an injured veteran’s group, Jacob’s Team, an autism charity, and the FCA’s local conservation efforts. The object: to catch the most and/or the largest striped bass, bluefish or weakfish…then release them all alive.

By 9:00 a.m., we were lunging and bouncing our way through the choppy waters from Chelsea Piers and lower Manhattan, joined by 41 other tournament boats. We passed various water taxis, the orange behemoth that is the Staten Island Ferry, some sort of willy-nilly sailing regatta and a huge porcelain-white yacht owned by a member of the .01%.

Not a quarter of a mile away, Mark Zuckerberg was preparing to take his little college project public. Our day would have some of the same fits and starts of Facebook’s initial stock offering. But it would end better.

We passed Sea Gate, the predominantly Eastern European gated community, once home to Isaac Bashevis Singer, and separated from Coney Island by a rock jetty and a fence. A moment later, within site of the amusement park’s Ferris Wheel, we started to cast, retrieving our lures through the froth of a mid-harbor shoal where school-sized striped bass and bluefish stacked up and occasionally nabbed at our artificial offerings.

It was a perfect day, sunny, breezy, high in the 60s. “In springtime, New York's air sparkles like champagne,” wrote Edward Robb Ellis. It was a good day to play hooky. Apparently, the weather had the fish in the same nonchalant mood. The bite by Coney Island shut off soon after that initial burst, providing plenty of time for shooting the bull.

Filmmaker, actor, writer, Ed Burns, his scruffy hair poking out from beneath a wine-red Fordham hat, is fresh off a successful run of what he calls “microbudget” films that satisfied his artistic impulses and turned out to be pretty good business propositions as well. In October, he stars with Tyler Perry in “Alex Cross,” the movie based on the James Patterson novel. But now he’s fixed his sights on a new project, an adaptation of novelist Jonathan Tropper’s “Book of Joe.” Burns says it may be his best work yet. “I’m really excited about this one.” He hopes to sell it to a studio this summer.

Burns is an excellent fishing companion: present, into it and comfortable, just the way he comes across in his screenplays and acting work. That genuine affability that he conveys in his life and movies is part of what has made Burns so popular. Literature may depict us as who we truly are, but films “show us who we want to be,” said Tom Bissell.